Opinion: UO’s recent partnering with police consulting firm 21CP Solutions is not a step for meaningful police reform, but an affirmation that police must always exist on campus.
———-

UO has partnered with consulting firm 21CP Solutions to produce a report reviewing the operations of campus’ police department and offer recommendations for reforms. The UO administration would like you to believe this partnership is its way of seriously responding to widespread calls for police reform. But in actuality this is a facade that will inevitably sideline student voices and conclude that UOPD is necessary for campus safety.

UO President Michael Schill promised reforms under external consultation back in 2020. However, he makes no promise about even considering alternatives to policing or reducing the budget indicating real change isn’t really on the table. 

Schill no doubt chose 21CP because of its experience at Harvard, Yale and even Pete Buttigeg’s South Bend: locations that brought in the firm after facing some type of public backlash to law enforcement. You probably weren’t aware of this deal, even though the contract was signed back in November of 2021 and promises to conduct a “thorough examination of input of campus stakeholders, especially members of marginalized communities.” An examination that is being done completely virtually because there are no 21CP staff on campus. Rather, the firm has gathered feedback by hosting some Zoom meetings.

These three Zoom meetings were attended by 11 students total. Even before taking sparse turnout into consideration, these “outreach” sessions were doomed to fail as each meeting was only an hour long and capped to 20 attendees, according to former ASUO senator Nick Keough who attended one.

Keough was adamant that the only feedback 21CP heard in these meetings was discomfort with UOPD as an institution and expressed doubt in its goals. Keough is right; the whole outreach process just feels like a box being checked. The university has an agenda: the validation of the continued existence of UOPD.

“This report is just something for the UO administration to point to that is not actually going to portray what students are saying,” Keough said. “It will likely frame policing as the only solution to safety.”

The UO administration likes to argue that it includes students in the decisions it makes, but even in a perfect world 21CP would have only interacted with 60 students for three hours without even stepping foot on campus. This isn’t representation; it’s feigning interest in students’ perspectives. With this attitude on display, it’s reasonable to assume 21CP’s report will heavily downplay any anti-police feedback.

21CP’s senior advisor Brenda Bond remarked in an Around the O article from March, “It’s essential that we speak with a diverse array of campus stakeholders.” As such, I reached out with the special email setup for the community to give feedback, to which the same Bond declined to comment for this story.

Also, that email address, “[email protected],” did not even work when the article was published, which is an ironically fitting way to treat student voices. It took almost a month before this obvious flaw in their outreach was brought up to then-vice president Kevin Marbury — as a public records request found.

By the way, did I mention 21CP is being paid $375 an hour?

But the university isn’t getting scammed. It’s willing to pay exorbitant prices to get the result it wants: “independent” confirmation that police are the only way to campus safety. The contract’s own timeline gives administration and UOPD a chance to “address any misinformation” in the first draft. If the university gets to decide what is misinformation, how is this an external, independent assessment? The report will undoubtedly conclude that, despite some bad interactions, UOPD must exist for campus to be safe and there are no other valid institutional alternatives.

I spoke with university vice president and general counsel Kevin Reed about the relationship between UO and 21CP Solutions and if the views of the campus community will be represented in the report.

“We can’t credibly say we have our fingers on the pulse,” Reed said. “I wish we had a more robust student voice.”

When asked about transparency, Reed told me that the General Counsel’s Office will consider making the first draft of the report publicly available.

Following the disappointing conclusion of  the Zoom meetings, 21CP has released a survey to solicit more student feedback on the state of campus safety and policing, but has also had poor participation. So, let’s help these consultants out. Here is the survey — be honest about your feelings on police.

This whole process is happening over what we have witnessed in the recent horrible school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. In a county that has fewer citizens than UO has undergrads; a city that spends 40% of its budget on the police and has its own SWAT team; and a school district that has its own police department, the police let 19 children be gunned down. All of that policing failed to stop the shooting, and if anything probably made things worse.

With that precedent set, how can students feel any confidence that UOPD can or will keep campus safe in any capacity?

Why is UO so certain that police are the solution? Reed said there’s not a robust student voice, but activists have been offering alternatives for years; more investment in institutions like CAHOOTS would be massive progress. Hell, Reed called UO activists “wimps” last year, and the administration has clearly heard the protests or else it wouldn’t be surveilling them.

At the end of the day, this firm and its report operate under the premise that police will and must always exist. These consultants will never conclude that the police aren’t necessary because their paychecks depend on them not doing so. Thus, they are not an independent review — they are a nuanced affirmation.

Police in schools are a deadend for safety and public funding. The sooner this university realizes that, the sooner we stop paying pencil-pushers $375 an hour to host Zoom calls and start actually making positive reforms in this community.